Times' theater reviewer C.B. Goldsmith always does what I ask him, and he does it thoughtfully and promptly. Unfortunately, I don't always reciprocate as I should. Take his review of "Menopause The Musical," for example. He attended Tuesday's opening night performance at the Plaza Theatre (the touring company performed it again on Wednesday) at the Plaza Theatre and turned in his review on Wednesday. Due to some unusual time constraints I dealt with last week, I wasn't able to get to it until today. So, sorry for the late posting, but here's his thoughtful review of that performance.
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By C.B. Goldsmith
?How can it be that on a giant planet, in a big city, on a street full of neighbors, with family and friends, we can feel so alone? We hold tight to ourselves and make our stand within these flimsy forts we call our bodies, but they age and throw us out.
??Menopause The Musical? may be a musical comedy, but it addresses this human condition, which can make the women who experience it feel so along. The touring musical turned the Plaza Theater on Tuesday night, the first of a two-night run, into one part confessional and one part revival meeting, addressing a topic that until recently was (like its sufferers) hidden in plain sight.
?Forty one years ago, the groundbreaking television show ?All In The Family? kicked opened that door and in an episode entitled ?Edith?s Problem.? In these ensuing years, this issue (like so many) has emerged from the shadows and become yet another vehicle to allow half the planet to feel less alone.
"Menopause The Musical? uses four disparate women of a certain age, shopping in a New York City department store, to share their stories ? and their symptoms ? in the revelation of a collective truth, which a predominantly female audience was uproariously delighted to share. The women are archetypes and, most often, well represent all women.?
There is the Professional Woman, played by Nicole Lee; the Soap Star (Cherie Price); the Earth Mother (Ingrid Cole) and last, but far from least, the Iowa Housewife (Roberta B. Wall). All were powerful, with the terrific, full voices one would expect from an Actors Equity (union) touring company. Each brought a subtle humanity to what could have been ? in the hands of a lesser writer than show creator Jeanie Linders ? generic caricatures of all women.?
?Cole and Wall delivered powerful comedy. Price delivered the pathos inherent in an aging actress. Lee centered this work around her musical hurricane of a voice, which rattled rafters. All four had the voices to give heft to what sometimes was a trifle musically, and the comedic chops to consistently turn the broadest of exposition nearer to universal truths.
?The music is song parody of the soft rock and R&B of recent times and was only moderately clever, which is about as good as most song parody gets. The comedy is broad and over the top, which, judging from the roars around me, was just about perfect for this cultural conduit.
?Menopause The Musical? is, in a classical musical comedy aesthetic, not much that is new or novel. It can be painfully hokey but in a theater full of folks having the absolute time of their lives, this criticism is as irrelevant as the critic himself.
?This show illustrates theater as a transformative agent for change and to judge it by the material alone is to miss the bigger picture. Women walk a razor?s edge in a ?man?s world.? They are the life givers, yet this gift has a shelf life. We revere them for the miracle of their fertility, but when this gift fades, we sometimes tend to devalue them unknowingly. Older men can have second acts amidst the big boy?s toys of newer cars or newer wives or newer hair. But for millennia, women have been expected to go back to their cave (or tent or rooms) and get over this change of life.?
?At its best, ?Menopause The Musical? addresses this inequality. The suggested cures of Prozac, plastic surgery and keeping it to themselves can be less about women than it is about the people around them, especially men, and their needs.
What lit up the theater and electrified the audience was the shared cure of community. By illuminating what once was suffered in private by women hidden in plain sight, an entire audience was liberated from their solitude by this light and humorous work.?
?It was wildly powerful to sit amidst women emancipated, and entertained, by the shared fading of shame. This was their story within a theater that belonged to them, and it was a privilege to be allowed witness this.
The falter and the failure of our bodies is the shared destiny of us all. Simone de Beauvoir framed it wonderfully when she said: ?To lose confidence in one?s body is to lose confidence in oneself.??
What ?Menopause The Musical? offers women is the freedom to not be so alone amidst this shared truth.
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